


Choices

by mydeira, Sadbhyl



Series: Responsible Adults (aka, The Menageaverse) [94]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-08 04:57:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/757303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydeira/pseuds/mydeira, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sadbhyl/pseuds/Sadbhyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Giles learns from the choices of those around him</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choices

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published November 3, 2005
> 
> In a weird twist, this time I have to thank Mydeira for leaving me be and letting this ripen.

The makeshift intensive care ward in the living room had finally gone quiet. Giles sat watch in the dining room as Xander and Anya dozed on the couch in the next room. Tara and Willow were upstairs with Joyce, tending Ethan’s injuries, while to Giles’ surprise it was Robin who now sat with Faith. Perhaps he was seeking a little atonement for himself.

Giles knew he should probably be reading, researching, trying to glean some last piece of information that might help Buffy survive the coming battle. Instead he sat toying with the bows of his glasses and trying to make sense of the day’s events.

He wasn’t certain if Ethan’s return was an omen or a blessing. For his own part, Giles was grateful to have his lover back, but the sight of Ethan’s ravaged body had been devastating. Giles had helped with the triage and resetting all of Ethan’s broken and dislocated bones, but all he saw the whole time was the twenty-five year old boy Ethan had been, body shattered at the base of the three story drop Ripper had sent him on. Giles knew he wasn’t at fault this time, that Ethan had known the risks going in. No one had asked him to do it. Giles felt responsible nonetheless.

He understood Ethan’s motives as clearly as if they were his own. In that unique way he had, Ethan had managed to make the noble appear selfish, or perhaps the other way around. In his mind, it had had nothing to do with saving the world or stopping an apocalypse. For him, it was a simple matter of defending his property. The rest was coincidental. The opportunity to thumb his nose at an entity as powerful as the First certainly played into it. Ethan could never resist a chance to flout authority.

As the candles burned low and the eerie lack of mechanical sounds rendered the house almost silent, Giles tried to reconcile the boy he remembered with the man barely conscious upstairs. And he realized that his difficulty was not in accepting the change in Ethan, but in acknowledging it within himself. He was no longer the brash, violent thug buried beneath layers of tweed and obligation. Somehow over the years, the two had merged, the brutality of youth now tempered by maturity, still present but no longer in command. They weren’t separate entities anymore, Ripper and Rupert. The fact that it was Ethan who finally got that through to him was sobering indeed.

Through the quiet, he heard soft voices on the front porch, slowly rising in volume, not as though approaching from a distance but rather as if gradually building in anger. The constant, vague pain in his hand flared a warning before his ears put a name to the speaker.

Angel was here.

Giles was already rising to his feet when the door opened to admit Buffy and Spike, followed closely by Angel, his face dark and furious. “When we saw each other last . . .” he insisted, implied meaning heavy in the words.

Buffy turned on him and crossed the scythe over her breast like some Egyptian god-king. “When we saw each other last, Angel, I was a wreck.” Spike moved to stand behind her, offering silent support without touching her, his face surprisingly calm. “I said a lot of things I shouldn’t have, and for that I’m sorry.”

Angel didn’t seem swayed, simply changed tactics. “But, Spike? You know what he is, what he’s done, what he’s capable of.”

“Yeah, I do.” Buffy shifted her weight, and Giles realized suddenly that, were they any other couple, she would have reached for Spike’s hand in that moment. But that kind of softness wasn’t allowed to her anymore, perhaps not since she died, and he felt a pang at the loss of innocence that simple gesture revealed. “Spike’s been there for me when no one else could be, Angel,” she continued. “Not you, not Giles, not my mom or my friends. He’s proven himself to me more times than he’s had to, so yes, I know exactly what he’s capable of.”

Angel turned to Giles, obviously looking for support. “You have to see this isn’t right, Giles. Can’t you talk some sense into her?”

Buffy turned to him as well, her green eyes sharply critical.

Her words from the night they’d tried to kill Spike came back to him. And Joyce’s. He thought about the man lying barely conscious in the bed upstairs, and about himself, about the man he was and the man he had realized he’d become. And it all made sense now.

He set his glasses down on the dining table, stepping closer to where the three of them stood. “I’ve found Buffy more than capable of making her own decisions, Angel. And of dealing with the consequences when she chooses poorly.” He looked at Angel pointedly with that. “It’s not my place to convince her of anything.”

Buffy’s expression softened, and for an instant Giles thought he saw tears standing in her eyes.

Angel looked devastated, as though his worst nightmare were coming true. “Do you love him?” he asked, his voice thick.

“I’m sorry, Angel,” she answered gently. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I will,” Spike interjected, his words smug but with no real malice in his expression.

She looked over her shoulder at him in an expression that was both stern and playful at the same time. “No, you won’t, or you’ll be sleeping with Andrew tonight.” She turned back to Angel. “I know you aren’t happy about this. You will always be my first love, but I’m not that girl anymore. I’m sorry.” Despite the repeated apologies, she sounded more determined than regretful.

In the face of her resolve, he had no choice but to relent. “You know I’ve only ever wanted you to be happy, Buffy. If this is what you want . . .”

“It is.”

He drew a deep breath. “None of this is why I came. I know what’s coming. I’d like to help.” He offered her a thick manila envelope and something shiny.

She automatically handed the file to Giles, stepping closer as she held the object up, revealing it to be an amulet with what looked to be the largest white diamond he had ever seen in the center. “What is this?” she asked, sounding more like herself. “Aside from really, really tacky?”

Angel smiled at some private joke. “No one knows. Just that it will help in the final battle if it’s worn by a champion.”

She studied it for long moments, the facets glinting in the dim candlelight as it turned on its bulky chain. Then without a word, she turned and offered it to Spike.

He stared at it in something akin to awe. “Been called a lot of things in my life,” he said, his voice soft enough to be meant only for her, “but champion’s never been one of them.”

“Well, if you don’t want it . . .” she turned as though to offer it somewhere else.

He reached out and snatched it away, the chain falling down over the back of his hand. “I didn’t say that.”

A soft smile curved the corners of her mouth, and he cocked his head at her in silent communication.

Angel looked pained.

“What’s going on down here?” Joyce appeared at the top of the stairs, tired and fierce. “You’re going to wake the girls up.”

He met her at the foot of the stairs. “It’s alright, Angel just came by to offer his help.” On impulse, he reached out and took her hand. To his amazement, she blushed softly, her eyes growing a little brighter. He resolved then and there to do this more often.

“My god.” Angel had noticed the chaos of the living room for the first time, peering in at the rows of girls laid out asleep or unconscious. “How many of them are there?”

“Not enough,” Buffy answered in resignation. “We had thirty-seven, but eight of them were hurt too badly today to be able to help. Not to mention Ethan.” Her words slowed, and Giles recognized the familiar expression of the wheels turning in her head.

“Ethan?” Angel was obviously confused now. “As in Ethan Rayne?”

“Need a scorecard, mate?” Spike was enjoying his rival’s bafflement.

Angel just shook his head. “I think maybe I do.”

Buffy looked from the girls arrayed on the living room floor to her mother before meeting Giles’ gaze with a questioning rise of her eyebrows. He thought he knew what she had in mind, so he simply shrugged and nodded.

“Angel, there might be something you can do to help,” she said, not taking her eyes off Giles.

Neither Ethan nor Joyce would be happy with the decision, but he would live with it. He squeezed Joyce’s hand for comfort. Ethan wasn’t the only one who wanted to protect what was his.


End file.
